Rennaisance of men
by ObsessedRomantic
Summary: Sergeant Heretic strikes again, This is a direct sequal to the 1968 movie in liue of Beneath the Planet of the Apes.and possibly an AU, I leave that to the reader. Read it then post a review, Please, Please, Pretty please? Feedback equals more chapters.
1. Birth day

The Ship, her ship was a wreaked ruin of twisted metal and shattered plastic on the desert plain she was standing on. Major Marion McQueen stood up from her work tired hot and drenched in her own sweat after putting her first officer and two mission specialists In the ground. Major McQueen went back into the wreckage of the Icarus 3 to see if anything was salvageable. The radio the main control every bit of technical equipment was junk. The only thing she could save was the four survival packs and the mission pack. That had been classified top secret and only Mission specialist Canfield knew what it was, the secret died with him.

The classified mission package turned out to be nothing more than survival supplies. Extra food, bottled water, medicine, tools, and even maps. Maps? How could they have detailed maps of an alien planet? It seemed as if Doctor Otto Hasseline knew far more than he was saying when he put together that mission package. Marion was betting this had something to do with those talking apes from space that showed up on Earth back before she was born.

Major McQueen gathered the supplies, taking as much as she could carry with her and burying the rest where she could find it later if she needed it. Then she looked at the maps and saw that her current location was 80 hours walk away from the green area of arable land on the map.

Over the course of a long hard trek she learned that this planet had a day/night cycle almost identical to that of Earth. This planet's primary star was as white as Sol and, if you held a knife to Marion's belly, she would guess, that it was a G-2 type star, like Sol.

After almost four days of walking, Marion's food and water were gone, and her hair was matted to her scalp and she was caked with sweat and dirt and her flight uniform clung to her as if it were a snake's hide. She was tired. No, not just tired, that word was inadequate to describe the bone deep soul deep aching weariness that seemed to be her constant companion now. She climbed the high cliff topped with those strange fur covered standing crosses and then collapsed to the ground. Marion was almost to the point of falling into unconsciousness when she was roused by the sound of running water. That sound shocker her enough to get her to rise to her feet and go to it.

It was an oasis of green and water and obvious plenty that beckoned her to it. By this time, Marion was out of her head with thirst and weariness and a disorientation bordering on delirium. Marion abandoned all sense, all caution and stripped off her uniform and underclothes as if they were made of acid, then she ran into the water and swam and drank and shouted with relief Marion did this for long minutes until she saw the moving shapes at the corners of her vision and realized she had company.

Marion ran, even despite her nakedness to where she discarded her clothes and found them gone. She saw the footprints and followed them, they led her on a trail of torn trouser and underthings and mangled boots and jacket, finally leading her to a large field of crops. In the crops stood wild mute animal humans as naked as Marion was, eating the corn and melons and other crops raw.

Marion's mind came back online and she realized that these creatures were feral wild animals. SOMEONE planted these crops and it clearly was not these rejects from a Tarzan movie.

The planters and owners of these crops would not be crazy about these 'animals' feeding on their crops, and they would soon be around. Whoever and whatever they were, Marion had no wish to meet them. She was about to turn and run when she heard the hunting horn. Marion stopped and hunkered down, if there was a horn there would be beaters, and if that, then there would be hunters. Her best move was to hunker down and impersonate a hole in the field.

Even in her hiding place, Marion could not help but watch the progress of the hunt and to see the identity of the hunters. What Marion saw did not just surprise her, they shocked her right out of the shoes she was no wearing, Marion was surprised out of her skin.

Apes. Gorillas, obviously large African Gorillas probably from middle Africa, the Congo most likely. However, they were here, riding horses carrying guns and hunting feral mute animal like humans. That was when she heard the gunshot and felt the bullet whistle past her ear.

This just got real and any further speculation was now purely academic.

Marion realized that they could see her and if they could see her, they could kill her, it was time be somewhere else. Marion ran and she even made a good twenty feet of distance, then the bullet tagged her right I nthe shoulder and she fell, when Marion turned to look up at the gorilla soldier he knocked her to the ground with his rifle butt, plunging her into darkness.


	2. First day of school

Marion came awake as her head throbbed in dull pain. She rolled over onto her back on the straw covered stone platform and blinked her eyes open painfully. Her head and shoulder were bandaged and she had clearly been cleaned up by unknown hands. Marion sat up, her head swimming and looked around. A cage. One among many and Major Marion McQueen was on the wrong side of the bars.

The outside of her cage was inhabited by several apes. One a gorilla janitor, the second a lower rank technician or medical tech and the third, the third was a female Bonobo Chimpanzee in a long green dress and footie leggings who had Doctor and probably chief of research written all over her manner. The janitor addressed her as Dr. Zira.

Marion had to talk to Dr. Zira in private away from any other apes, but for that she would need time. Time to learn, time to get better, time to figure away out of this cage. Until then Marion realized that her best two survival tools were her own nudity and silence if any of these characters got the idea she was smarter or more civilized than the rest of these man-critters, they would carve her skull open with a butter knife. Marion knew this because back on Earth when the talking apes landed, that was what darned near happened to them.

Major McQueen did her best to limit her obvious manual dexterity and motor skills to what the other humans were displaying, but Dr. Zira kept watching her, talking to her, and hovering around her. Offering her sugar cubes and sweet nuts and trying to coax her out of her shell of feigned ignorance. Zira knew, or at least suspected that Marion was a great deal smarter than the average man-beast.

Five days after waking up in that place, Marion saw Dr. Zira 'accidentally' leave her pad and pencil stylus where Marion was sure to be able to get at it. It was almost as if Dr. Zira had encountered a human savant before. Someone else that could speak, read, and write. Marion realized that in all likelihood Zira had encountered Colonel George Taylor and or one or more of his crew.

This was her chance to possibly find out what happened to them.

She took the stylus, pad, and wrote,

"I am Major Marion McQueen U.S. Air Force, A.N.S.A. do you know Taylor?"

Then ,she turned it over and went back to the rear of her cage. When Zira came in later and read it she ordered Julius to move Marion out of the cage and into a private lab. When the two female primates were alone Zira offered Marion a large blanket and said,

"Would you like to cover your nakedness …Major?"

Marion draped the blanket around her shoulders and said,

"Thank you, Dr. I appreciate it. Tell me, how did you know?"

"Oh, let us just say I have met other humans, and one of them had the same sort of eyes you have, he had the Bright eyes of a thinking primate. That was what I called him for a long time, Bright Eyes."

Marion stood up and dropped her blanket as she grabbed Dr. Zira by the Shoulders,

"Called who, who was he, Colonel Taylor, Captain Dodge, Lieutenant Landon, Major Stewart, Who did you meet?"

"He called himself Taylor."

Marion realized that she needed something more workable than a big old blanket held around her with her hands, so she sat down and tore the blanket into pieces. One wide strip she tied around her hips, and a thinner strip she tied around her breasts. The blanket bikini was the same as a twenty-dollar call girl. It was not pretty, but it did the job.

Finally, she took a final piece of the blanket and tied it around her waits to hold the sheathed knife Zira offered her. It was pretty impressive, Zira giving a human on this planet a knife was like handing an M-16 to a Barbary ape. Calling it, a risk was an understatement.

Dr. Zira introduced her to Dr. Cornelius her Archeologist husband and they both told her about Ape City Dr. Zaius and the latest development General Ursus the power mad lunatic gorilla that was fanning the flames of war and trying to foment an imperial crusade into the desert she had walked in from.

Cornelius told her,

"You have to get out of here, Marion, you cannot let Ursus or Zaius catch you, if they do,…. He did not finish as the threat was obvious and did not need to be verbalized. Marion would only be killed if she was very lucky. A male talking human was to be feared and killed, but a female talking human, Marion turned green at the thought.

Marion left their home under cover of night and hid out in the underbrush to keep the 'heat' off the two kind Chimpanzees. Then the next morning she was treated to General Ursus' grand speech as she hid near the ampitheater.

It was filled with all the hoary old lies and catchphrases she remembered from the sad and sorry progress of human history.

"I am but a simple soldier".

"The only good blank is a dead blank".

"We must strike first to keep them from attacking us."

"We have to protect our children from the blank scourge"

And her personal favorite

"Extremism in defense of our side is no vice".

His speech was practically the greatest hits of Jingoism.

The worst part was that the other apes were eating it up as if it were the free lunch at the Kiwanis club.

Marion broke cover and ran away from the theater and toward the trees, two Gorilla sentries saw her and opened fire and, when they missed her, they gave chase.

Major Marion McQueen was running for her life from two armed great apes in uniforms who were trying to kill her, and but for some blanket fragments, she was just two steps from being a naked hunted animal.

The world as she knew it had officially gone crazy.


	3. Independence Day

Major Marion McQueen ran as if the devil was right behind her, and while that was not strictly true, two ticked off rifle toting gorillas came very close to qualifying. She thought she might have nowhere to go until she saw the half-buried cave hiding in a knoll of grass covered hillside. She crawled into it and in so doing, lost her blanket bra. That, she decided she could live with a lot better than the bullets the apes wanted to put in her back.

As she slid down the slope in the cavern bruising her butt, she thought to herself,

"I should have made a sturdier outfit. Then she face planted on the ground and mumbled,

"My boobs hurt, my butt hurts, and I feel like I'm in the porn version of One million years B.C."

Then she stood up and looked around, really LOOKED around the cavern she found herself in. It looked as if it was an industrial sized King Kong version of a Broadway property house. Then she realized they were ruins. They were the underground ruins of a borough of New York city. She was standing in the ruins of New York City.

This was Earth, she was home. The time acceleration on the ship's chronometer, the strange quantum effect they flew through, she was NOT in another solar system, she was on Earth in it's far future. This was the year thirty-nine seventy-six and she was standing in the ruins of what was once one of the greatest cities on Earth.

All of her friends, all of her family, everyone and everything Marion McQueen cared about was gone. They had most likely been burned in a nuclear fire and long gone down to the dust.

Marion McQueen cried. For herself, for her friends and family, for her country and for all the billions who died unmourned. After she cried herself out she tried to clean her face as best she could and walked deeper into the ruins of the New York City rapid transit system. As she walked and looked and thought, she was, unknowingly watched The watchers did not use telescopes or binoculars or even closed circuit television, but they nevertheless observed her with an air of clinical detachment and not just a little curiosity.


	4. Memorial day

Marion McQueen walked through the remains of the Brooklyn-Queens nexus of the New York subway system and, as she did so, she remembered what it had been like growing up in this city. To her New York had be a big loud bustling raucous machine that had been an experience to grow up in. Citizens of New York City would often wear their residence there as if it were a badge of Honor.

"N.Y.C., the place to be"

"New York, the city that never sleeps"

"I'm from New York and you're not."

"We love New York, and we hate you."

Marion herself took a certain amount of pride herself in being from "Noo Yawk", especially given that she grew up in the neighborhood of Bedford and Stuyvesant, or "Bed-Sty". Sometimes at the cape, she told the other Astronauts that she was the Astronaut from New York, rather than from the United Stated.

The city, her city, "Fair Gotham" "the big Apple,"

In many ways for Marion, this was harder to deal with than becoming a member of a species of dumb sub sapient animals. It was all gone.

Yankee Stadium, Broadway, Wall Street, Bed-Sty polytechnic High School, The New York Philharmonic, the New York metropolitan public library, it was all gone, Literally blown to bits in an atomic fire.

Now, New York City slept forever in a tomb of Earth and regret.

The country bumpkins and Apple knockers had won at last.

Marion walked on down the tunnel past an old rusted out chain of subway cars until she came to a still intact window on one car. In this dark window, Marion saw herself.

Dirty, hair matted to her head. Naked to the waist and even then wearing an old dirty fragment of a blanket as her sole clothing. Bare footed and smelling to high heaven, just like the animal the Apes on the surface thought she was.

The shame and disgust at herself and the fallen state of the city around her filler her with rage and she punched out the window In so doing, she lacerated her hand and had to bind the cut with the scrap of cloth she had been using to hold the knife at her waist. Fortunately, it was only a flesh wound and looked worse than it was. Her unknown useen observers continued to watch her, noting her angry outburst and making their own judgments upon it.


	5. Holy day

Mendez, the chief Savant of the hidden city stood in the Gallery with the Holy Council and watched the savage woman via clairvoyant vision. She seemed smarter than the brutes on the surface and smarter even than the speaking primates in their city in the green zone did. In addition, her visage seemed familiar, almost as if he should know her.

The other transmitted to him that she was close enough now for passive scanning even if not for active action.

He scanned her mind with the others and was temporarily taken aback.

She was the holy Mother, the Queen, sent by the Holy Bomb to give a second birth to the race of men.

She would come in of her own accord; the Holy Bomb had preordained that. When she arrived, she would need to be protected and fed and cared for. Mendez knew now why the other one had come to them, or rather been sent. Mari the Queen was the Holy Mother, the other star voyager was the blessed father. The two would join and give birth to the new race. The new race that would take back the Earth from animals and brute savages.

As he thought that, Mara sent him the vision of an Ape army invading the lands of the people of the bomb. Time was growing short and Mara suggested that they spur the Queen on to bring her sooner. Before the Apes arrived. Mendez sent back,

'Very well, but be careful, the Queen is holy and not to be bullied about as if she were a common savage.'

Mara nodded once and complied, gently coaxing the Queen and putting tinder to her natural curiosity. This seemed to work and the Holy Mother quickened her pace.

Marion did not know how, or why, but for some reason she now felt, not just a desire, but a need to move forward and quickly. There was an urgency to her sudden feeling of curiosity she could not explain. It was almost as if someone was just behind her, whispering in her ear, telling her,

'Come see, wonders are ahead of you, and there is food and clean water and warm clothes, come and see.'

Marion quickened her pace almost to a run and almost did not notice when the rough dirt and earth turned to hard concrete as she reached a still intact stretch of tunnel. As her bare feet slapped against the smooth floor she realized that this was new, or at least newer than the other ruins.

Before Marion knew it, she was running through a well lighted fully intact well built fortified hallway. And there were several men in some kind of grey overall garment facing her. She thought they might make trouble for her until an older man in a long robe came forward and told her,

'Welcome, Holy Mother, it is most felicitous to see you at last.'

At least that was what she THOUGHT she heard, and then Marion realized that his mouth never moved and he never really spoke. The voice had been in her head.

Then it hit her, the telepathic voice made Marion realize the true origins of her sudden eager and borderline biological need to get here. These people put those thoughts and impulses in her head. If they could do that, who knew what else they could do. They could whisper and they could nudge. If they could manage that, perhaps they could even PUSH.


	6. Mother's day

Marion was now in the preserved and partially rebuilt underground catacombs of what was left of New York City, New York. She was faced with people who had the power to communicate telepathically, and it would seem, ever affect her thoughts and make her do things. Marion did not want to think about that, but her logical mind forced her to out of sheer pragmatism.

Carrying their implied powers to their furthest logical conclusion, they could probably move her around and manipulate her as if she were a marionette on a string. The prospect scared the daylights out of her and she wanted nothing more at that moment than to get out of this gargantuan glorified mausoleum combined with a house of horrors.

Just as she was thinking that, Mendez, their leader actually spoke and told her,

"We would prefer it if you remained with us, Holy Mother. If I were you, I would put on this garment to cover your shame and sit in the room our guards take you to abide in."

One of the guards, a woman handed her a smock that extended from neck to knees effectively covering her body except for her arms and legs. Then they escorted her to a smallish room with a pitcher of water and a plate of crackers that looked like Jewish Passover crackers. Matzos The woman entered with her and told her who they thought she was. The Holy Mother, Mari Queen

Marion felt as if she was going to throw up. They wanted her to be some kind of perverse baby factory for their new race to do who knew what. It was sickening, not just that they thought it was going to happen, but that they seemed certain of it. They did not act as if they wanted her to do it or as if they were asking her to do it; they were acting as if she was GOING to do it. As if, it was going to happen. To them it was almost a religious prophecy.

Mara, the woman sitting with her told her,

"And it is written in the book of Revelation of Saint Otto, the wise,

Mari the Queen of men shall come from out of the sky and she shall be a dark woman dark of skin and bright of eye. She shall become one with the Warrior of the lost and their union shall be blessed.

Yea, there shall be a new race of men, risen from the womb of the queen of men and she shall be like unto a new Eve, and the demon apes shall be brought low, their judgment shall be nigh."

Marion was horrified, she wanted out of there and away from these people and their disgusting dream of some new 'master race'. It was perverse what they wanted, it was just nauseating. She did not care how bad things were here, she was not going to be strapped down and turned into some brood mare, no way, that was not going to happen.

Mara spoke again telling her,

You think it is not going to happen and you want to get away, but where will you go, into the wastelands, back to the apes, where? Here there is safe haven,"

Mara knew she was lying but Marion did not know of the marching ape army, or at least Mara did not think the star voyager knew.

"So when do the apes show up, how safe is it going to be here when General Nutzie and the Keystone monkeys bust in here?"

"How, did you know?"

"Mara, When I left the Green Zone, the Banana flavored version of Attila the Hun was putting his army together and making his big 'oh what a lovely war' speech."

Then Marion retreated into her mind and created a Zen barrier to her thoughts, shielding them and locking them away so that she would seem to have no thoughts at all, but she would be able to plan and think without these zealots doing their carnival trick and finding out what she was up to.


	7. Father's day

After a meal of crackers and a vegetable soup and water, Marion found herself in the company of Mara and three of those stone faced guards. They led her to a different section of their underground shelter.

Mara led her to an obvious detention cell and pointed her at the occupant, telling her,

This man is the wandering warrior. He came to us months ago and we have been holding him until the Holy Bomb revealed his purpose to us. You will speak with him and come to know him.

The African American looking guard opened the cell and the Anglo guard looked menacing at the man with a warning glare keeping him in the cell, Marion realized 'whitey' was probably telepathically telling him to watch his behavior.

Mara bid Marion to enter the cell and when she did the female star voyager finally got a good clear look at the man in the cell. She exclaimed,

"Colonel George Taylor!"

"In the flesh," he responded and then continued,

"You must be Marion McQueen Dr. Otto Hassline's fair haired girl. What in the name of heaven are you doing here?"

"I was the commander of Icarus 3 our mission on paper was to find and rescue you."

"I see, on paper, you say, I take it you're skeptical of Poppa Otto's claims and promises."

Marion grimaced remembering Taylor's constant need to be as big a jerk as possible. He was always needling the other members of the Icarus program George Taylor always had to be the hippest, smartest, most urbane man in the room. In truth, Marion always thought he sounded like a Diva.

The two Star voyagers dummied up and Mara took the hint. She left taking one guard with her. Two of them stayed. After Mara, left they resumed talking.

"So, Major McQueen, what was happening when they sent you out?"

Well, things were getting pretty grim, Colonel the Government was becoming more and more of a force in people's lives and the public at large did not really seem to care. Of course, after the dogs and cats all died, that didn't help, so people started keeping apes, first as pets, then as slave labor.

"Well, that sounds about on par with how short sighted and stupid people normally are."

Yeah, I know when I found out this place was actually Earth in our distant future, Was not all that surprised, really, were you?"

"No, Major, in fact when I saw Lady liberty all rusted out and broken up on that beach I was mad and I was shocked, but once I thought about it, everything I had seen up to then made a lot more sense."

"Yeah, the huge similarity of all the bio forms," Marion, answered, and then the two astronauts started alternating

Taylor; "Apes speaking colloquial American English."

Marion: "This city and it's inhabitants."

Taylor: "Yeah, that reminds me, what's this Holy bomb they keep talking about?"

Marion: "I don't know, but it sounds damned unsavory."

Marion stopped speaking and Taylor asked her,

"Major, you've been to Ape City, did you see two Chimpanzees named Cornelius and Zira?"

"Sure did, Colonel, and when I left them they were fine, well, as fine as they could be with the Ape government sending the Army to invade the so called forbidden zone. A couple of clowns named Zaius and Ursus were leading an army of gorilla's toward some sanctuary of humans they think is in here."

"Yeah, Zaius, I knew, and it may partially be my fault that the orangutan thinks that. He refused to believe that I came from space so he took it in his head that there is a second green zone with humans in it. He wants to find it and wipe it out."

"Boy, is he ever going to be surprised?"

"Yeah, say when did they leave and how soon will they get here?"

"Well they hadn't left yet when I escaped, so if I assume that they left the next day, then they'll be travelling at the top walking speed of their slowest soldier on foot. That will get them here in four, maybe five days ballpark figure."

Well, we don't want to be here when they do show up, do we?"

"No, Colonel, we don't and I sure as shottin'd don't want to be the Mommy for these nut job's supposed 'master race' either. Colonel I suggest we follow the primary duty of Officers in enemy hands and attempt escape."

"I second that Major, to the Nth degree."


	8. Prayer day

Colonel George Taylor and Major Marion McQueen had decided to leave their current environs. The two of them realized that their telepathic 'hosts' might be a problem in a achieving that goal.

The answer was the practice of Zen. Marion was teaching Taylor to quiet his mind to make his mind at least on the surface, a flat placid undisturbed pool. Under the surface of this placidity they would be able to plan and strategize and even overtly act and their 'hosts' would not be able to stop them.

The hardest part was cracking through George Taylor's practiced clever cynicism.

Finally, she led him in meditation and they both placed themselves in a deep calm alpha stage that would be taken for deep sleep. Their guard came into the cell to see what was going on and the two 'sleeping' people beat the daylights out of him, both still in seeming deep sleep. Then they took the keys left the cell and began searching for a way out of the catacombs.

This led them into the remains of a large church rather than out of the subterranean city. What they saw when they looked around was unheard of.

The two star voyagers looked and they saw a packed house church service. There had to be a hundred people here if there was one. In addition they were singing reverently and joyfully,

"All things bright and beautiful,

All creatures great and small,

All things white and wonderful,

The Lord bomb made them all."

At the head of the church behind the altar was an intact and presumably operational ballistic missile with an intact warhead.

The 'Preacher' led the congregation of the Basilica of Saint Strangelove in another song, then he spoke a sermon to them.

"Today, we are blessed. The prophecy of the holy mother has come to pass and the holy mother and father are with us.

We pray thee, oh holy bomb, protect them, shelter them under your holy fallout and shield them from the brute creation that comes.

We know that we are not important, we can be expended for the sake of the great plan, all that matters is that the Holy mother and her consort live and join as one, to birth the new day of our race."

Then he turned toward the missile and said,

"In reverence, I reveal my inmost self unto my god,"

The rest of the congregation said the same and, all of them removed their head coverings and, what turned out to be their masks to reveal faces marred and scarred by radiation. Hair gone, skin almost translucent over muscle and bone the sight was grotesque All of them sang out,

"Unto my GOD!"

Then they all donned their masks once more and as Marion and Taylor made ready to leave, the Preacher looked straight at them and told them,

"Holy Mother and Consort, though we can no longer penetrate your thoughts we can still perceive you by the absence of noise, as if they were two radios broadcasting static. We beg you, do not go, let us shelter you. Stay here under the Holy Fallout of our god."


End file.
